The present invention relates to a medical infusion pump with bar code reading capabilities, designed for use in a hospital or other healthcare institution or facility. The medical infusion pump with the bar code reader also forms a part of a patient care system. The invention relates particularly to labeling the containers not only with human readable printed label information but also with corresponding bar code information and to an infusion pump having an optional bar code reading mechanism and computer program system incorporated with the pump to optionally permit authorized healthcare personnel and particularly nurses to either scan the information into the pump or to manually enter the information through a control panel.
Modern healthcare, particularly in hospitals, clinics and other healthcare institutions, has improved and benefitted significantly from the development and use of medical infusion pumps to enhance patient care. For example, parenteral infusion directly into the patient and, in particular, intravenous infusion directly into the patient""s circulatory system, can be advantageous. Therapeutic fluids, drugs, medications, pharmacological fluids, hydrating fluids, sucrose fluids, nutrient fluids, or other therapeutic fluids can generally be infused using disposable cassette pumps and peristaltic pumps. Syringe pumps can also be used in some instances. Particularly, it is advantageous to provide different kinds of controlled infusion including rate controlled infusion, periodic infusion, and bolus dosage infusion, all depending upon the medication, the patient, the patient""s condition and any of a number of other healthcare considerations.
In institutional healthcare facilities, such as major hospitals, large clinics and other institutional healthcare facilities, prescribed medications are prepared by a staff pharmacist or a team of pharmacists, according to a doctor""s order. Detailed instructions for the administration of the drug shall be provided also according to the professional knowledge of the pharmacist with respect to pharmacological protocol for the medication or drugs involved. The medication is received by a nurse or a medical technician in an appropriate container prepared by the pharmacist to be delivered to the patient""s room and accordingly administered to the patient. For purposes of accurate infusion, rather than merely using a timed drip-type infusion mechanism, infusion pumps are beneficially used. Based upon the prescribed medication, the protocol for administering the modern infusion therapeutic fluid may include carefully controlled infusion rates. Modern infusion pumps may be adjustably configured by the person administering the infusion to deliver the fluid according to the doctor""s and/or pharmacist""s instructions.
In order to facilitate management and accuracy of infused medication, various systems have been devised for purposes of providing certain drug information and/or patient information, either directly to the pump from the container of the medicinal fluid or to the pump from a central computer network to be interconnected with all infusion pumps throughout the medical institution or hospital. One such infusion fluid institutional management system provides an infusion pump having means for storing predetermined infusion data in a computer type memory. Such a prior system requires comparison of compatibilities of drugs, allergies of the patient, appropriate drug therapy, and patient conditions. This kind of complex comparison requires A bar code label on the drug container is scanned and read into the computerized pumping system for automatically comparing the scanned clinical information to the data stored in memory for the infusion pump. The transferred data is automatically checked with the stored data for comparison and for prompting the operator to take action in response to discrepancies between the scanned data and the predetermined stored data. Although such a system provides certain measures of security to reduce certain kinds of manual entry errors through comparison of the bar code read data with a comprehensive data base of predetermined information in a large computer memory, it nevertheless includes certain complexities and fails to assure certain safeguards that might be accomplished without a central processor network and without a computer memory for storing comparison infusion data for numerous different drugs. There is a need for an optional system for scanned entry of basic infusion data having human accountability built in and without the associated complexity.
To overcome certain deficiencies and to reduce certain complexities of prior bar code scanner infusion devices and systems, the present invention provides an infusion pump with a bar code scanner and a display for infusion data scanned from a bar coded label on a medicinal fluid container. The bar code scanning capability is selectively activated by an authorized nurse or other trained healthcare professional. Upon activation, the nurse is prompted to scan in a nurse""s ID, which ID includes a special authorized user code. If the nurse""s ID does not include the authorized user code, then the scanning mechanism is inactivated for further scanning of patient and drug infusion information. If the authorization code is present, then the pump prompts the nurse to scan in the patient""s ID. This patient ID is preferably scanned directly from a patient""s wristband, ID card, badge, or hospital chart. If the patient information is not scanned, then the scanning mode again becomes inactivated and manual input of infusion data and patient information will be required. When the patient ID is properly scanned, then the nurse is prompted to scan information from the pharmaceutical fluid container, whether a bag, a bottle, a syringe or another container. These containers are provided with a bar code label identifying the intended patient, the drug name, the concentration, concentration volume, volumes to be delivered, infusion rates, the patient""s height and the patient""s weight, as may be applicable. The drug infusion data is in accordance with a doctor""s written order for medication or other therapy and also as established by a staff pharmacist who prepares a bar code label that is capable of being read by a bar code reader operatively coupled to a pump according to the present invention. The bar code format for the label and for the pump bar code reader should be compatible throughout a given medical facility. Preferably, the label also provides the information in human readable format along with the bar code.
Upon reading information from the label of the container of medicinal fluid, pump control software displays an appropriate display of the name of the drug identified by the bar code label. The software further captures the concentration, concentration volume, volume to be delivered and infusion rate, if not calculated. It will be understood that in certain instances the physician and the pharmacist may specify the infusion rate directly so that it might not be necessary to provide infusion data from which the rate would otherwise be calculated by sophisticated pump software. Thus the concentration, dosage, patient height and patient weight is also provided, if applicable for purposes of calculating the infusion rate. The patient""s name or patient""s ID number is also provided in bar code format and other important patient information could be additionally provided. The pump software will require that an authorized nurses ID has been scanned and that the scanned patient ID matches the patient ID on the label. Certain items of required infusion information are displayed for the nurse to view on a visual display. The nurse then must validate required displayed items of input, including the drug name, the concentration, the concentration volume, the volume to be delivered and the infusion rate. If all of the required infusion information is validated by the nurse, then the infusion may be initiated according to the accurately scanned infusion information such as the volume to be delivered and infusion rate that is read directly from the infusion information bar code label on the fluid container and into a software control program of the infusion pump. If any of the required information cannot be accurately validated by the nurse, then the scan mode is exited and the nurse must manually input the required data and infusion rates into the pump software control program using control panel buttons, toggles and displays.
Because the nurse""s ID must be scanned into the system before the bar code reading can be initiated and also because the patient""s ID must be successfully scanned and verified as matching the patient ID on the bar code label by the infusion pump comparison process, the system is provided with safeguards not present in other systems. Having the nurse""s identification scanned and recorded in the pump software, causes the nurse""s validation of the scanned input information to be a meaningful exercise for which human responsibility is established. The authorization code that the nurse""s ID has provided also insures that the infusion setup using a bar code scanned infusion data will be initiated only by responsible identified professionals. The scanning and confirmation of the patient""s ID from a wristband, a patient ID card, a patient badge or patient chart will increase the accuracy of delivering the appropriate medications to the proper patient. Preparation of the both the medicine and the labels by pharmacist maintains current safeguards and confirmation the of information by the comparison process and by the authorized and identified nurse further increases the security of the system.
As set forth in greater detail below, a new bar code reading system is provided having a medical infusion pumping device, bar code scanning hardware connected to the medical infusion pumping device, pump software and software to create a label with appropriate bar coding and a label for containers of medical fluids with the appropriate bar code information on the label. The system provides the user with an optional method of infusion data input. Existing medical infusion devices provide for manual keyboard and display programming for medical infusion protocol and administration instructions for the infusion device. The new system has additional components that provide an optional method for inputting medical infusion data that is useful at healthcare facilities to reduce the risk of incorrect infusion data and to automate and speed the infusion of a variety.of fluids for patients. Preferably the bar code reader is contained within the infusion device and will capture data from an infusion container appropriately labeled for the pump-specific control software. An authorized healthcare professional will be identified as part of the bar code reading sequence, the patient will be similarly identified as part of the bar code reading sequence and the authorized and identified healthcare professional will validate that all scanned parameters were captured correctly and only then will the pump be activated to deliver fluid to the patient. The parameter to be captured on the bar code label and transferred to the pump can include patient identification number, drug name, concentration and concentration volume, volumes to be delivered, rates of delivery (if not calculated from concentration, volume and dose), dosage data (if not calculated from concentration, volume and rate), patient weight, weight unit, patient height and height unit. All scanned entries can be recorded in memory or printed for quality control review and for use to assist a physician in performing appropriate future treatment.